Akhtar Usman

Akhtar Usman is a leading Urdu poet, critic and translator who has full command on all registers of the language and poetic genres.

An original resident of Islamabad area, he was born on April 4, 1967. He has also written extensively in Persian, Potohari, Punjabi and English.[1]

Akhtar Usman has been attached to various chapters of the Halqa e Arbab e Zauq, and has been a secretary of Islamabad Halqa from 1993 to 1994. He is also the founder of Halqa e Arbab e Zauq, Attock[2].

Contents

For Akhtar Usman, poetry is not a pastime, a profession, or even a way of life; it is life itself for him. Anybody who has seen him even for a few minutes can have no second thoughts about attesting that he lives in poetry and, in turn, poetry lives in him.

اس اہتمام سے پیکر ترا تراشتا ہوں

گمان گزرے کہ جیسے بنا بنایا ہے

(With such consummate care, I carve out the visage / You might think it sprang into being, your image)

This is a couplet that could be dubbed his primary motto, which is evident in every page of his poetry as well. He chisels out every line of his verse with such artistic perfection that it starts to glitter in the dark and looks as natural as a sparkling star or a glowing firefly.

Akhtar Usman is a poet who has incomparable mastery over all registers of Urdu language. This is not surprising, given that he is one of the few genuine Persian poets of Pakistan. What is surprising, however, is his command over the Indic linguistic sensibilities which set him apart from his contemporaries.

Akhtar Usman has been called a “neoclassical” poet. While most of Urdu poetry has gone through several linguistic and semantic upheavals during the past half-century – which sometimes borders on the absurd and the bizarre – he remained close to the heart of the sumptuous and infinitely rich, tradition of Urdu poetry. This is all too well on display in this new collection as well.[3]